


The Price of Pretending

by AlexIsOkay



Category: citrus - サブロウタ | citrus - Saburouta
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 01:29:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13730235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexIsOkay/pseuds/AlexIsOkay
Summary: Love and sex aren't as intertwined as Harumi Taniguchi would have liked. Just enough for it to be an annoyance.





	The Price of Pretending

Harumi slowly sat up in her bed, strands of messy hair hanging down around her face. The blanket fell away from her chest as she did so, and it let her feel the cold air of the room spill across her skin, made even more pronounced by the thin sheen of sweat that covered her. Her eyes moved around the mostly dark room, looking across the floor to try to see where her clothes had ended up, until she felt a fingernail running its way up her spine.

“Are you getting up already, Taniguchi-senpai?” The voice came from behind her, and even though she couldn’t see Matsuri’s face, she could practically hear the smirk all the same. Harumi stiffened at the sensation- she didn’t pull away, but she clearly didn’t seem to be welcoming the touch either. The sheets shuffled and the mattress creaked a bit as Matsuri moved closer, and then her arms were draping themselves around Harumi’s shoulders, and the smaller girl was hanging off of her back. “You’re not gonna stay and cuddle with me?”

“Since when have you ever cared about something like that?” Harumi wasted very little time in reaching up to push Matsuri’s arms away from her, although from the way she could feel Matsuri’s chest pushing against her back, she had a feeling the other girl wouldn’t give up on this that easily. And sure enough, as her hands wrapped around Matsuri’s arms, Matsuri just clung on to her even more tightly.

“Is this really the sort of person you are?” Matsuri whispered, lips hovering beside Harumi’s ear. If they hadn’t just gotten done Harumi might have thought Matsuri was trying to seduce her, but as it was, she could tell this was different. “You have sex with a girl and then you just toss her aside? I thought you were better than this.”

“Are you seriously trying to high road me right now?” Harumi’s grip on Matsuri’s arms stagnated at that point, not loosening, but not getting tighter either. She realized that, unless she wanted to throw Matsuri out of the bed, there wasn’t much point in trying to pry herself loose. She would be here until Matsuri decided to give up and let go of her, and she wouldn’t be getting free a moment sooner.

Matsuri’s words, while an annoyance, didn’t hold much weight to Harumi. She knew that this was the sort of person Matsuri was: she would take whatever opportunity she could to get underneath someone else’s skin. Riling people up and trying to annoy and irritate them was simply what she did. From someone else the words might have meant something, but from Matsuri, they were little more than an annoying buzzing in her ear. There had never been any ambiguity about what this was: sex didn’t have to involve emotion, and in their case, it didn’t. Matsuri was probably more insistent about that than Harumi herself, in fact. Pretending, now, that she was somehow offended by that was nothing more than an attempt to irritate her upperclassmen. Despite that, she seemed committed to the act.

“I’m not doing anything,” Matsuri whispered. Her hands were moving now, and Harumi could feel a nail dragging itself along her neck, up towards her jaw. Harumi found it incredible that Matsuri would try this hard to act sultry at now of all times. “I’m just pointing out how messed up it is that you would use me like this.”

“I’m not _using_ you,” Harumi retorted. “I didn’t ask you on a date. You knew exactly what you were-”

“I’m not talking about the sex,” Matsuri interrupted. “I’m talking about Yuzu onee-chan.” The room had already felt cold to Harumi, even with Matsuri pressed right up against her back. But the moment she heard those words, it seemed to get just a little bit colder still. She tensed even more, a shiver running up her spine. It took her a second or two to say anything, and when she did, her response was hardly the most eloquent.

“ _Excuse me?_ ”

“You think I haven’t noticed?” The finger against Harumi’s jaw was pushing against her more firmly now. Not enough to really dig in, but enough to scratch lightly as it started to move back down. Masturi’s tone had changed as well. The playful, flirtatious, taunting nature of it had disappeared, replaced by something that was just a little more heavy, a little more serious. She didn’t quite seem angry. But she seemed irritated. She had gone from being annoying, to be being annoyed. “You’re really not subtle about it, Taniguchi-senpai,” Matsuri went on. “Where is she right now, anyway?”

“You think I’d know that?”

“I think you would,” Matsuri insisted. “If I had to guess, I’d say… You probably wanted to hang out with her first today. But she was busy with another one of her dates. So you wanted to distract yourself. And not just because she’s your best friend. How close am I?” she whispered.

“Where do you get all these crazy ideas?” Suddenly Harumi was trying to push Matsuri’s arms off of her again, and this time, Matsuri actually let her. She moved to the edge of the bed, feet hitting the floor before she stood up. Matsuri stayed sitting at the middle of the mattress, but a grin had appeared on her face. An especially malicious one.

“You’re not telling me I’m wrong,” she pointed out, rolling her eyes as she spoke. “People like you are so predictable. You get your heart broken and suddenly you’re throwing yourself into bed with someone else like that’ll make you feel better. It’s pathetic.”

“That’s a lot of assumptions to make based off nothing at all.” Harumi was already in the process of pulling her clothes back on, gathering them up off the floor wherever they had landed. They were a little bit wrinkled and disheveled now, but Harumi didn’t seem to be putting that much effort into her appearance in the first place. It wasn’t like she was planning on going anywhere else after this. “Stop pretending to care about any of this anyway. I know you’re just trying to piss me off.”

“Pretending?” Matsuri repeated. Harumi heard the bed creak again, and when she looked back over her shoulder she found Matsuri had moved closer to the edge. She was leaning forward now, fingers curled over the edge of the mattress, eyes staring straight at Harumi through the dark. “You think I’m just faking this? You think it doesn’t hurt me knowing I’m just your second choice when you can’t be with Yuzu onee-chan?” Once again, though, despite how serious her words might have sounded, the way Matsuri’s lips curled up as she spoke told Harumi otherwise. “Isn’t it natural to be upset when I know you’re just using me as your rebound? I-”

“Then why do you still say yes?” The question made Matsuri freeze up, and just like that, the smirk was wiped off her face. She was silent for a few seconds, before her brow creased, voice returning to annoyance.

“What?”

“I’m serious,” Harumi demanded. “Nobody’s forcing you to do this. You don’t have to. So why do you still reply every time I text you?” Another few seconds passed, and then Matsuri was rolling over, turning her back to Harumi and tugging the blanket up just enough to cover at least part of her body.

“You ruined it,” she muttered out. “You can leave now.” That time it was Harumi’s turn to fall silent, simply staring at Matsuri’s back for a long moment before she reluctantly resigned herself to gathering the rest of her clothes up off the floor. She didn’t speak again until she was finally fully dressed, caught halfway between the door and the bed. Her eyes looked forward towards the knob, then back over her shoulder again at Matsuri, still laying there facing the wall.

“Maybe, next time,” Harumi said, stepping towards the door and placing her hand on the knob, “we can just hang out.”

“Get over yourself,” Matsuri mumbled back. “You’re not some fucking prize.” Harumi was silent for a few more seconds before she twisted the knob, moving out into the hall.

“Fine,” she replied. “Suit yourself.” Neither of them said anything else before the door shut behind her.


End file.
